The Civil Rights Movement: Then and Now

By Dan Elish

Discusses the main concerns of the Civil Rights movement in the 1960s, and how those have evolved since; what's changed for the better, what might be worse, and where do we go from here.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Capstone Young Readers
• Release date: May 18, 2020
• ISBN: 9781977143464

Dan Elish

Dan Elish is the insanely gifted author of many novels for both adults and children, including The Attack of the Frozen Woodchucks, 13 (based on the Broadway musical), and The Worldwide Dessert Contest. When he's not busy typing furiously away on his Lap-Top (not a Gum-Top or a Hat-Top or even a Balloon-Top), you can find Dan in New York City, where he lives with his wife, Andrea, and daughter, Cassie, and son, John.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Cover

Title Page

Chapter 1: A Need for Change

Chapter 2: Taking It to the Streets

Chapter 3: Getting the Nation’s Attention–Early 1960s

Chapter 4: The End of an Era—Successes and Setbacks

Chapter 5: Fifty Years Later

Chapter 6: What’s Next?

Timeline

Glossary

Read More

Critical Thinking Questions

Internet Sites

Index

Copyright

Back Cover

— CHAPTER 1 —

A NEED FOR CHANGE

Enough was enough.

It was 1965 and southern blacks were understandably angry. Yes, a major civil rights bill had finally passed Congress the year before, outlawing segregation in schools, restaurants, and public places. But what good were those equal rights if black Americans were still unable to exercise the most valuable freedom of all: the right to vote. True, the Civil War, fought a hundred years earlier, had brought an end to slavery. But how did that help African Americans when southern states passed a series of laws requiring blacks to pay poll taxes and pass absurd literacy tests full of trick questions as a way to keep them from going to the polls?

The local sheriff’s posse stood over an injured protester in Selma, Alabama.

Something had to give—especially when, on February 26, 1965, civil rights activist Jimmie Lee Jackson was murdered in Alabama, shot by a highway patrolman during a peaceful march for equality. With tempers flaring, civil rights leaders James Bevel and Diane Nash called for a march—a long one too—to highlight the need for voting rights. The route they picked was from Selma, Alabama, to the state capital of Montgomery, 56 miles away. But on March 7 the first group of marchers was viciously attacked by police with billy clubs and tear gas, an event so horrific it came to be called Bloody Sunday. As Time magazine put it, Rarely in human history has public opinion reacted so spontaneously and with such fury. Indeed, with outrage building, the marchers tried again on March 10.

But this time civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. turned the marchers back, unwilling to defy a federal court injunction blocking the march, angering student protesters and others who had traveled there to fight. Still, King waited, seeking the protection of federal troops before setting out on the dangerous journey. White supremacists, men and women who wanted the nation to remain a two-tiered, segregated society, were riled up. That night, white civil rights activist James Reeb, a minister, was beaten to death. In response, on March 15, President Lyndon B. Johnson asked Congress to pass a national voting rights bill.

The history of blacks in America began with their kidnapping in Africa in the 1600s. It was a very long road to freedom and civil rights.

He also granted the marchers the federal protection they wanted. On March 21, accompanied by 1,900 members of the National Guard, King and the group of protesters left Selma for the long trek to Montgomery. Walking down Route 80, known locally as the Jefferson Davis Highway, the marchers arrived in Montgomery on March 24. In the end, 25,000 people arrived at the state capital to take a stand for equal